Sabrina has served as CEO of Palo Alto Software (www.paloalto.com) since 2007, where she has led the launch and development of the award-winning online business planning and management tool LivePlan (www.liveplan.com). Sabrina also contributes articles regularly to Bplans (www.bplans.com), Palo Alto Software's free small business resource site, and Mommy CEO (www.mommyceo.org), her personal blog about striking work-life balance between running a business and spending quality time with her husband and three young sons. Before she took the helm at Palo Alto Software, Sabrina served as Director of Online Marketing at Commtouch, Senior Producer at Epinions.com, and founder of her own Web consulting company, Lighting Out. In 2001, five years after graduating from Princeton University, she and her husband Noah founded a UK software distribution company that later was purchased by and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Palo Alto Software. When Sabrina is not at work she can be found chasing her kids all over Oregon: biking, hiking, swimming, skiing, and anything outdoors that uses up a lot of a little boy's energy.

Working Mother Magazine Salutes 2011 Working Mothers of the Year

As I tab through the entries for the women who have won the honor from Working Mother Magazine as the 2011 Working Mothers of the Year, it is hard not to be inspired. All these moms were nominated and hail from the Working Mother Magazine 100 Best Companies to work for. Every mother on this list is tackling a career in companies and industries often dominated by their male counterparts. And on top of it these women are mom’s taking on more than one might imagine possible.

There is Sandra Boller-Bibrey who decided with her husband, after raising 7 of their own children, to adopt 4 sisters, ages 9-15. There is Jamie Simpson, a partner at Ernst and Young, who thought she needed to resign when she had a child with medical needs. But instead, her company convinced her to stay on, and helped her satisfy her career goals while still giving her the time and balance she needed to take care of her child. There is also Barbara Taylor, BDO’s General Counsel and most senior woman, mom to 3 kids 14 and under. I could go on and on.

The coolest thing about this list, besides the amazing women on it, is the fact that all these women have achieved what I consider the holy grail for working mothers: recognition in their careers, and amazing feats as mothers. We hear and read so much about women who are “mommy tracked” or women who wonder how many children they can have, and still keep their career on track, or women who put off having children in order to keep their career on track. This list of women all embraced who they are in the working world, but did so without apologizing for being mothers. This may mean adjusting work hours in order to make everything happen, or staying up late after kids are in bed, to finish work. But it does not mean giving up the chance to succeed in the business world, or bow down to the man who has chosen his career over anything else. One way or another these women have embraced their lives, and prove to all of us that you can have it all. I too salute all these working moms. Congratulations!

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